Since Google launched the first Android phone in 2008, the Internet world we are in has broken into the fast lane, Android and iOS love and kill each other, let us see the power of small mobile phones, thus giving birth to the mobile Internet industry, which has carried out a drastic transformation of the real world.
In this short period of time, there is an American company that has accompanied Android to this day, and they are also experiencing great changes.
Snapdragon, experience everything that appeared in the era of smartphones
In the early days of the smart phone era, new mobile phone products blossomed more, chip technology sprouted in many ways, at that time the market share occupied by each company was not much, after all, the cake was not big, but the development direction was very clear at that time: nokia-led semi-smart phones have become a yellow flower, Android momentum is fierce, even if the form and function are still young, but replacing the Symbian system has become a foregone conclusion.
Qualcomm launched the first Snapdragon chip as early as 2007, from Snapdragon S1 to S4, witnessing the survival of the two camps of Android and Windows Phone from the two strong to one.
Snapdragon S series of the earliest product Snapdragon S1 chip, the highest basic frequency is only to 1GHz, single core, that era is still mainly CPU-based, there is no independent graphics processor, but there were also many mainstream devices to choose it: HTC Wildfire, LG Optimus series and so on.
▲ HTC Wildfire series, image source: Geekanoids
The continuous upgrading of hardware capabilities is constantly promoting the improvement of the mobile application experience, and at the same time, mobile applications are also driving the update iteration of hardware in reverse. In this regard, Qualcomm has also been making precautionary arrangements, such as the acquisition of AMD's mobile graphics chip assets for $65 million in cash in 2009, which was the predecessor of Adreno GPUs, which completed the original accumulation for the rise of subsequent mobile games.
With Adreno, snapdragon S is superior in chipset integration, thus achieving a positioning transition and being adopted by more and more flagship mobile phones. With the continuous growth of Qualcomm Snapdragon, more and more members of the brotherhood have joined on the road, including Xiaomi.
In 2011, Lei Jun, as the founder of Xiaomi, stood at the 798 Art Center in Beijing and released the first Xiaomi mobile phone, with a lot of people in the audience and tears on the stage.
▲ At the speech of xiaomi's tenth anniversary, Lei Jun used PPT to review the original millet mobile phone
At that time, the machine in Lei Jun's hand had a Snapdragon core in it, specifically the Snapdragon S2 chip.
Since then, Snapdragon and Xiaomi have become a pair of brands that achieve each other and advance and retreat together.
In the years that followed, the Snapdragon S Series moved forward, with process ramps up to 65nm to 28nm, core frequencies up to 1.7GHz, and memory specifications ranging from LPDDR to dual-channel LPDDR2.
Step by step, Qualcomm Snapdragon has gradually gained a foothold in the flagship field.
It's time to start the next phase, in early 2013 Qualcomm re-planned the S series and launched chipsets such as the Snapdragon 600, and the S series became history.
New phase of the former flagship platform: Snapdragon 600 (2013)
The Snapdragon 600 chipset delivers four Krait 300 cores, a 40% performance boost over the Snapdragon S4 Pro processor. At that time, this kind of computing power was a standout, providing a platform for mobile phone manufacturers to show their muscles.
It integrates Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11n/ac wireless networking, NFC near-field communications, support for shooting 1080P HD video, dtS-HD and Dolby Digital enhancements. Since then, it can be seen that the development route of Snapdragon is no longer simply stacking CPU computing power and saving CPU cores, but is in full bloom and striving to be a hexagonal warrior.
At the same time, Samsung and MediaTek even launched an eight-core architecture, but Snapdragon did not hurry to make up for the shortcomings of the bucket. At that time, the models equipped with the Snapdragon 600 chipset were: HTC One M7, Nexus 7, OPPO N1, vivo Xplay.
At that time, Android mobile phone manufacturers began to try to light up different skill trees on the platform provided by Qualcomm Snapdragon, deriving routes such as "performance stream", "image stream" and "audio fever stream".
At this point, the Android camp has opened a roadmap for differentiation, and "embracing openness" has become a common topic between Android and Qualcomm Snapdragon.
In the same year, another product line of Qualcomm Snapdragon is gathering strength to prepare for its future, that is, the Snapdragon 800 series.
Snapdragon's new milestone: Snapdragon 800/801/805 (2013-2014)
The Snapdragon 800 series was born in January 2013, but it was not until the birth of the Snapdragon 801 in February of the following year that it officially entered people's vision.
At the same time, the Snapdragon 600 series is classified in the high-end market.
Snapdragon 801 with some upgrades on the basis of the Snapdragon 800, with a quad-core Krait 400 core design and Adreno 330 graphics processor, but also offers QC 2.0, LPDDR 3 memory, Bluetooth 4.0 and support for 2K resolution screens, and even has the ability to record 4K video, building on this chip, giving birth to many classic models, including LG G3, HTC One M8, Samsung Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z3, Xiaomi Mi phone 3, Hammer T1, OPPO Find 7, OnePlus phone 1.
Since this generation of computing platforms, we are glad to see more and more Chinese mobile phone brands on the stage of history, and it will not be long before they will become the trump cards in the Android camp.
Opening the 64-bit Era: Snapdragon 808/810 (2014)
In 2014, Android ushered in the 64-bit era, thanks to Qualcomm's update of the Snapdragon 808 and 810 SoCs with 20nm process technology in this year.
For the first time, the Snapdragon 810 features an octa-core architecture (4 x Cortex-A75 + 4 x Cortex-A53) in its flagship product, along with the Adreno 430 graphics processor.
The Snapdragon 808 features a six-core architecture (2 x Cortex-A57 + 4 x Cortex-A53) and an Adreno 418 graphics processor.
▲ Huawei OEM Nexus 6P
Word-of-mouth: Snapdragon 820/821 (2015)
In the Snapdragon 820 series launched by Qualcomm in 2015, the new custom CPU architecture Kryo was launched, using Samsung's 14nm process and quad-core (2+2) design, which achieved comprehensive performance improvement by increasing the core frequency, and the number of cores was reduced, and the overall power consumption control was better.
This generation uses the Adreno 530 graphics processor, which has a 40% performance improvement over the previous generation, while also achieving the same amount of compression in terms of power consumption, which is a bit of a game.
This year, Qualcomm held high the banner of heterogeneous computing, integrated the Hexagon 680 DSP (Digital Signal Processor) in the Snapdragon 820, and shared part of the work of the CPU and GPU, including computer vision, motion sensors and some image processing tasks, etc., effectively reducing the overall power consumption of the SoC.
▲ Xiaomi Mi 5
This concept seems common today, but it was a major innovation at the time. Since then, the Google Pixel's artificial intelligence has become a major selling point of the series, and part of the credit can be attributed to Qualcomm Snapdragon's heterogeneous computing strategy.
It is also from this time that the System on Chips (SoC) began to go to the front, on the Snapdragon 820, integrated CPU, GPU, LTE baseband, DSP, ISP many chip modules, this is not a simple computing processor, but an all-round energy core, all modules on the whole body of the mobile phone, are subordinate to its commander.
A small chip sits on such a high degree of integration, and the Snapdragon has an unmatched barrier advantage.
It is worth mentioning that the first mobile phone equipped with Snapdragon 820 that year was LeTV Max Pro, but it was launched in the name of an engineering machine, limited to a thousand units. The real mass production products are still spent on Xiaomi, when Xiaomi is no longer green, they are ready to launch the fifth generation of flagship mobile phones.
Highlight Moment: Snapdragon 835 (2016)
With the good reputation promoted by Snapdragon 820, Qualcomm Snapdragon ushered in another highlight moment in November 2016, which was the year of the birth of Snapdragon 835 and the birth year of Xiaomi 6, "Xiaomi Nail Household".
▲ Xiaomi Mi 6
Snapdragon 835 uses (4 + 4) Kryo280 architecture, large core frequency of 2.45GHz, small core frequency of 1.9GHz, using Samsung 10nm process made, compared to the Snapdragon 820 has a 27% performance improvement, but the chip size is reduced by 30%.
Powerful functions have become a stepping stone to Snapdragon's multiple functions, this generation of SoCs support 4K resolution screen, UFS 2.1, LPDDR4x quad-channel memory, dual 14bit ISP (image signal processor) and QC 4.0 fast charging and other functions, the Snapdragon mobile computing platform has begun to prototype at this time.
On the basis of Snapdragon 835, Qualcomm will continue to improve in the next few years, launching two generations of Snapdragon 845 and Snapdragon 855 SoCs, after which we finally ushered in the 5G era on the Snapdragon 865 mobile platform.
Aggressively Entering the 5G Era: Snapdragon 865/865 Plus (2019)
One of the biggest selling points of the Snapdragon 865 is that it can be paired with the Snapdragon X55 5G modem to support band combinations in most parts of the world, such as millimeter wave and TDD/FDD bands below 6GHz, as well as non-independent (NSA) and standalone (SA) networking, dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS), global 5G roaming and multi-SIM card designs.
In addition, it also has a peak downlink rate of 7.5Gbps that far exceeds that of its peers, and people directly call "buy baseband and send chips".
In addition to the 5G network, the Snapdragon 865 uses a "three-cluster" architecture design, and the core architecture of this "1+3+4" has been used on the latest generation of Snapdragon mobile platforms, and it has also upgraded the graphics processor to Adreno 650.
This soC also supports up to 200 million pixels of photos, recording video up to 8K/30fps, and it also improves support for screen refresh rates, from 90Hz of the previous generation to 144Hz in one go.
▲ OPPO Find X2 Pro Bamboo Green Edition
It is also from that year that the high brush screen is no longer the "privilege" of the top flagship, and has become the standard item of various price point products, which has greatly improved the consumer experience, and people's perception of high refresh rate is far stronger than simply increasing pixel density.
Representative models of Snapdragon 865 are Samsung Galaxy S20 series, OnePlus 8 series, OPPO Find X2, and Xiaomi Mi 10 series. At this time, domestic brands have become the main force of the Android camp.
5G begins to become standard: Snapdragon 888/888 Plus/870 (2020)
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 released at the end of 2020 is the first Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile platform that adopts Samsung's 5nm process process, and integrates a Snapdragon X60 5G modem, the octa-core three-cluster architecture remains unchanged, the Cortex-X1 large core has a maximum core frequency of 2.84GHz, and the graphics processor is upgraded to Adreno 660, which increases the graphics rendering speed by 35%.
In addition, the Snapdragon 888 supports QC 5.0, when the fast charging power of the flagship mobile phone has reached the level of 100 watts. For this generation of SoC, Qualcomm has spent a lot of effort on AI capabilities, which integrates the 6th generation OF AI engine, the new Hexagon 780 processor can achieve 26 trillion operations per second (26 TOPS) With the help of the AI engine, artificial intelligence plays an increasingly important role in moving images, and computational photography has become the main product publicity force of the flagship mobile phone that year.
▲ vivo X70 Pro+
In addition to the artificial intelligence on the help of computational photography, Snapdragon 888 itself also has a good image capability, it is the first Snapdragon chip to support 3 ISPs, its computing power is powerful enough to record 3 4K HDR videos at the same time, in addition to supporting triple concurrency features, if the phone is equipped with three different focal lengths and pixel level cameras, these three cameras can run in the background at the same time, listen to user calls, switch lenses will be more silky.
At this time, Snapdragon has become the undisputed leader in the field of mobile phones, and is an option that the top flagships in the Android camp cannot avoid. We are familiar with the OPPO Find X3 Pro, OnePlus 9 Pro, vivo X70 Pro, all of which without exception put the imaging ability in the most prominent position on the promotional page.
In the future, Snapdragon is everywhere
By 2022, the Snapdragon flagship mobile platform has enabled a new naming method, abandoning the original Snapdragon 800 series naming and replacing it with a more concise Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, or directly calling it Snapdragon 8. The new series name also means a new product strategy.
In terms of performance, Snapdragon 8 is still strong, a Cortex-X2 3.0GHz super core, three Cortex-A710 2.5GHz large cores, plus four Cortex-A510 1.8GHz small cores, forming a familiar three-cluster eight-core architecture, the performance scheduling strategy is more reasonable, and the results are remarkable.
The new Adreno graphics processor has 30% more rendering power, which was verified in our actual testing process, for high-load games such as the original god, Snapdragon 8 has been able to run frame-stable for a long time, and with Vulkan's multiple optimizations, it can even improve mobile game performance by 60%.
Based on this performance, Snapdragon 8 brings the 4th generation Snapdragon Elite Gaming technology, which includes VRS Pro (Variable Resolution Rendering Advanced Edition), Adreno Frame Motion Engine (Image Motion Engine), Stereoscopic Rendering and many other new technologies for gameplay, paving the way for mobile esports.
In addition, Snapdragon also launched Snapdragon Sight Snapdragon imaging technology, which packages a complete set of image improvement technologies, including 18-bit ISP, 8K HDR, super multi-frame engine, etc., the purpose is very consistent: to raise the image foundation, so that capable manufacturers can tune out more out of the camera function, and then let the capable users take more textured photos, in terms of comprehensive imaging capabilities, ahead of other chip manufacturers, terminal manufacturers are naturally more willing to give priority to the choice of Snapdragon core.
▲ iQOO 9 Pro
From the Snapdragon 820 to enable the SoC concept, Snapdragon has been constantly seeking big breakthroughs outside the CPU and GPU: multi-ISP, artificial intelligence, fast charging, 5G baseband, digital audio, data security, which have become more important features of Snapdragon in the later period, because as the CPU computing power reaches a certain height, the simple CPU computing power improvement can bring sweetness to users at the experience level is no longer obvious, and Snapdragon, aware of this, has found a new development direction for itself.
The integration capabilities accumulated over the years have helped Snapdragon open up new boundaries, seek multi-dimensional evolution, and finally completely transform into a more complete mobile platform in the Snapdragon 8 era.
Looking back, it is Qualcomm's adjustments and progress in the development process of smart phones that have created today's Snapdragon brand.
At present, Snapdragon is no longer stuck in the field of mobile phones, and has been working in the fields of automobiles, XR, and PCs for many years, and has grown into the most independent brand that Qualcomm cannot ignore. We will surely see the figure of Snapdragon in more forms of consumer products, and this dragon will write more miracles in the future.